Category: Environment

Nice recent episode I missed to include in the video weekend compilation of the last two days:

It’s much nicer than its title made it seem.

(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for Redacted Tonight, Lee Camp, and the title: “~220~ Lies About California Fires, Foreign Influence In Midterms, US Funding A Cult”)

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A weekend collection of videos dedicated to fair-world issues of healthcare, the political revolution, smears of challengers by the establishment, the devastation of Puerto Rico by far more than just strong winds, information and freedom of speech under attack, the dark deeds of the corporatist global empire, and a vision for the future to fight for.

I. Bernie & Bob Conversation

Let’s listen to Bernie in a conversation rather than a stump speech:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Bernie Sanders & Robert Reich discuss how we defeat Republicans’ horrid ‘health care’ proposal “)

Robert Reich:“A lot of [working/poor] people don’t realize that they are fighting over a smaller and smaller slice of a pie that is actually getting bigger; but most of the pie is going to a very tiny group of very powerful people who are using some of that wealth to pollute and corrupt politics. … It’s not about “message” [manipulative catch phrases and such]; it’s about framing the issue ,so people understand what is really happening. It’s about giving people the motivation and the hope that they can join together and act on what they now understand.”

Bernie:“You gotta go into Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kansas, and Indiana, and you gotta go into those rural areas, and say: ‘You know what? Your kid can’t afford to go to college. And the black kid in Cleveland can’t afford to go to college. Don’t you think that maybe we should work together to make public colleges and universities tuition-free?’”

Bernie didn’t even have a Super PAC for his 2015-2016 campaign. I am increasingly convinced that Bernie’s campaign was never about the presidency but about mobilizing the American People against the cruel and destructive rule of the oligarchs. He never thought, setting out, that he could win the presidency. But he did hope he could change our conversations, away from establishment BS to the things that really matter, step by step, starting small, and he did succeed with that. An enormous first victory for the people, but certainly not one to stop at.

II. How the Establishment Smears its Challengers

Things that Bernie carefully tried to avoid was getting himself (and thereby the burgeoning people’s movement) smeared out of existence by doing one of these two things many of us desired him to do: (A) going against the DNC’s election theft that stole the primaries from him (because too many Americans were not, and – I fear – still are not awake and informed enough to believe in the giant extent to which our elections are being doctored and rigged), and (B) giving fodder to the corrupt corporate media for making claims that he was the spoiler in the general election that gave us Trump (if he had run independently or in the Green Party), the way Ralph Nader, one of America’s greatest public heroes, was smeared and slandered to the very fringes:

The dog and pony show we call politics in America, and the old tactic of smearing those who challenge the establishment (and far too many people believe these smears):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Ralph Nader on Single Payer Health Cae “)

Ralph Nader: “If you are not into politics, politics is gonna be into you.”

III. Puerto Rico: Storms and Continuing Colonialism

The news about Puerto Rico shouldn’t merely cover the hit by Hurricane Maria in isolation of all else:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “What You AREN’T Being Told About Puerto Rico & The Disaster Unfolding There “)

Debbie Lusignan, who no longer cares to call herself the Sane Progressive because labels like ‘progressive’ have so successfully been abused by the establishment to divide us – and she really speaks for ALL the people – also informed herself about Puerto Rico. So, if you want a longer explanation, you can listen to her:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Puerto Rico Billionaire Vultures As Destructive as Hurricane Maria “)

If you need a reminder of our climate becoming more severe, here is a compilation of footage from Hurricane Irma, one of a cluster of record-breaking weather events that popped up this year:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “MOST SHOCKING Footage Of Florida Hurricane Irma #Florida #IRMA “)

IV. Information and Freedom of Speech under Attack

I touched upon this before, for instance on Thursday: our Information and Freedom of Speech (not the stupid porn kind, but the one that allows us to have a voice in our affairs and organize ourselves against our predatory establishment) is under attack:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “The Corporate State Escalates Media Censorship [79] “)

V. Resisting the Faux-Resistance

I am no friend of the astroturphed Resist-Trump “movement,” since I see it as a sheepdogging effort to keep the corporatist neoliberals in power over the “Democratic” Party and thereby the party duopoly in its seat of blocking the American People from having a democracy and a country with prosperity, justice, and liberty for all. Still, if this video was indeed shot at an Anti-Trump event, it is still worth sharing because of so many sensible people having the once-in-a-lifetime chance to speak their minds:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Empire Files: Voices From The Anti-Trump Resistance “)

Well, if you read the explanation TeleSUR left under its Youtube posting, you can actually see why these folks were so spot-on. They are part of this effort: “On September 16-17 a major national gathering was held in Washington, D.C. called the People’s Congress of Resistance, a broad and diverse coalition of organizers and community leaders formed to build the class-struggle wing of the anti-Trump movement.”

VI. Vision for the Future

Looking a stone throw beyond the Bern:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Michael Parenti on Bernie Sanders “)

Brightest point made: Bernie says that we want the rich to pay their share, too. That makes for a good start perhaps; but don’t we, in the end, want more? Don’t we deserve more? Don’t we want the rich to stop ruling our lives and meddling with our minds to control us? How about this: envision a world of shared prosperity in which we all have good lives, not suffering from want, fear, and despair. A world in which there are no poor and no rich.

VII. The Militarized Corporations

The parasitism of the military industrial complex works hand in hand with the parasitism of Big Oil and other large, hungry corporations (the tools of the robber billionaires):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Can you face the truth you TV and Smart-phone Junkie !? – Michael Parenti – The Face of Imperialism “)

VIII. Global Corporate Empire

Meet the global empire of the robber billionaires:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Michael Parenti – To Kill A Nation”)

Are we finally coming to understand who the enemy of everybody is? The robber billionaires live like gods but are demons.(My guess is, the speech in this video was given in around the year 2000 when Parenti’s book “To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia” came out.)

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Here is a nice interview by, rather than of, Bernie Sanders — well worth watching:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Bernie Sanders & Al Gore: A Candid Conversation on Climate Change”)

I like how Al Gore is comparing our cottage industry of climate change denial to the tobacco industry’s public brainwashing with actors dressed up as doctors (and the tobacco companies’ delaying of sound public health policies by lobbying politicians, of course – lobbying being our classic euphemism for legalized bribery of officials in our country, of course).

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A picture is worth a thousand words. Among other interesting things, this article sports exactly such a picture about the issue of climate change, one which makes it visible like none other I have ever seen.

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America has 1.2 million miles of lead pipes for water delivery, pipes that have a lifespan of about 75 years, and many are reaching that age. It’s a recipe for disaster that experts warn will cost close to $1 trillion to fix. Thus, Flint MI, is just a tiny piece in a much larger story.